The Damned
Director: Luchino Visconti
Genre: War film, Political drama, Family Drama, Family Film, Drama
Year: 1969
Country: Italy, West Germany
Language: German Language, Italian Language
Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Griem, Helmut Berger, Charlotte Rampling, Umberto Orsini, Reinhard Kolldehoff, Florinda Bolkan, Valentina Ricci, Nora Ricci, Renaud Verley, Irina Wanka, Karin Mittendorf, Wolfgang Hillinger
The Damned (Italian: La caduta degli dei [literally, "The Fall of the Gods"], German: Die Verdammten (Götterdämmerung)) is a 1969 film by Luchino Visconti.
The Damned has often been regarded as the first of Visconti's films described as "The German Trilogy". The others are Death in Venice (1971) and Ludwig (1973). Henry Bacon (1998) specifically categorizes these films together under a chapter "Visconti & Germany". Visconti's earlier films had analyzed Italian society during the Risorgimento and postwar periods. Peter Bondanella's Italian Cinema (2002) depicts the trilogy as a move to take a broader view of European politics and culture. Stylistically, "They emphasize lavish sets and costumes, sensuous lighting, painstakingly slow camerawork, and a penchant for imagery reflecting subjective states or symbolic values," comments Bondanella.
The film centers around the Essenbecks, a wealthy industrialist family who have begun doing business with the Nazi Party. On the night of the Reichstag fire, the family's conservative patriarch, Baron Joachim von Essenbeck, who represents the old aristocratic Germany and detests Hitler, is murdered. Herbert Thalmann, the family firm's vice
(This is information generated from a Wikipedia article, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.)
Internet Movie Database